Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1889 — Strange Showers. [ARTICLE]

Strange Showers.

ILY. Sun. The story comes from Dakota that the good people of Jamestown have been treated to a shower of frogs. Years ago this interesting visitation would have inspired awe and even fear, but the intelligent frontiersmen of Dakota take a common sense view of the event, A very .lively hurricane was in the neigh? borhood just then, and the people think the frogs were caught up from their place of abode in a slough, had a free ride on the wings of the storm, and were ■ftWnliy dumped into the principal street of the town. This view is certainly more plausible than the old notion on similar occasions, which was that the frogs of some other world were making a tour. Prof. Geike says that falls of frogs and toads are a frequent occurrence in Italy, but it is noticed that the phenomenon always takes place near a wall, and there is a grave suspicion that the little hoppers are merely washed from the roofs and gutters during a heavy fall of rain. A little science and observation usually strips these surprising occur rences of their mysterious aspects. The rain ufblood that'frightunsd The Hague nearly out of its wits in the seventeenth century was caused by an enormous swarm of tiny red water fleas. Other sanguinary showers have had an equally harmless origin, and most of them have certainly been caused by rain falling through very fine red dust from desert regions, which is sometimes carried through the air for hundreds of miles. The peasantry of Andalusia in 1804 witnessed a shower of wheat, and were disposed to think the good old days of the children of Israel had returned, when provisions were Providentially supplied. The explanation was very simple when it was found out. Over in Africa, across the Straits of Gibraltar, gome laborers had been threshing wheat, While they were at their midday meal a hurricane swooped down, swept their threshing floor clean, lifted the grain thousands of feet in air by its mighty suction, and finally sowed it over the streets of a Spanish town. There is a good deal of humor in the pranks nature occasionally plays, though the worid, before it understood nature very well, often thought these sportive freaks were matters of very solemn and portentious import.